Following the critical and commercial success of Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn is to write another dark crime thriller about formidable women – this time with Steve McQueen.

The British director behind 12 Years a Slave, Shame and Hunger is next working on Widows, a remake of a Lynda La Plante-penned TV series from the 1980s. It concerns three women who are widowed after a heist by their bank robber husbands goes awry, and who then use notebooks they left behind to conduct the crimes themselves. McQueen’s film will add a fourth widow, and shift the action to the US.

Flynn has been brought on board to co-write the new adaptation with McQueen, following her screenplay from Gone Girl which she adapted from her bestselling novel. She was also recently hired by David Fincher to adapt the Channel 4 drama Utopia for HBO.

Following the Widows remake, McQueen is also planning a film about the singer and activist Paul Robeson, saying: “His life and legacy was the film I wanted to make the second after Hunger, but I didn’t have the power, I didn’t have the juice.” He’s producing (and directing the pilot of) Codes of Conduct, an HBO drama with Helena Bonham Carter, Rebecca Hall and Paul Dano, with newcomer Devon Terrell playing a young black man trying to clamber the rungs of New York’s socialite ladder. McQueen also recently directed the video for Kanye West’s latest single, All Day.